

















d 






y 



°^ •••'•■ 






^3 V 










f\ » • • • » ^ -s. . V *** 

«l O 







sb?/**"** °°ww. : <r% -.w/ ♦* *♦ *«*w ^ 

^ *■ ° » ° ° <^ 



* * ^ Ay* 





















v^v v^v v^V V- 








SPEECH 



MR. G. P. MARSH, OF VERMONT, 

I 




> 3 



THE MEXICAN WAR, ' 



DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE U. S., 



February 10, 1848, 



^Kf 






WASHINGTON: 

PRINTED BY J. & G. S. GIDEON. 

1848. 



SPEECH 



The House being in Committee of the Whole on the State of the Union, and having under 
consideration the bill authorizing a loan not exceeding §18,500,000, 
Mr. MARSH, of Vermont, said — 

Mr. Chairman: 

I propose to avail myself of this occasion, to do what I have not yet done in. 
this place — to express, namely, in the fewest possible words, my own opinion, 
and, as I suppose, that of a large majority of my constituents, respecting the 
causes, character, objects, and tendencies of the war in which we are engaged, 
and to assign the reasons which will compel me to vote against all measures 
designed for the prosecution of hostilities professedly commenced for defence, 
but which have been, and are, waged for purposes of aggression, invasion, and 
conquest. 

It is said that it is too late to investigate the causes of the war, and that the 
only remaining question proper for the consideration of Congress is, what mea- 
sures will tend to bring it to the most speedy termination, and enable us to 
conclude a peace upon terms most advantageous to ourselves. This would, 
indeed, be so, if it were true that a state of war, hoAvever commenced, absolved 
us from all duties towards those of our fellow men who have become our ene- 
mies. But there are those, and I profess myself of the number, who can dis- 
cern no sound distinction between the principles of public and private morality, 
and who believe that war, like private violence, can lawfully be resorted to 
only as a necessary means of securing already existing rights, not of creating 
new and independent claims. It becomes, therefore, material to ascertain the 
-origin, causes, and purposes of every war, before it is possible to determine 
when its lawful ends have been accomplished, and what measure of reparation 
the victorious party is entitled to exact. 

In inquiring into the origin of the present war, it is essential to distinguish 
between its primary causes and its proximate occasions. That its first cause 
was the annexation of Texas, no man disputes; and there is as little doubt 
that its immediate occasion was the occupation of the left bank of the Rio 
Grande by the army of the United States, in obedience to the order of the Pre- 
sident. The war is the natural and legitimate consequence of annexation; but, 
though a natural and legitimate, it does not follow that it was a necessary, re- 
sult of that measure, and therefore this Administration may be chargeable with 
its guilt, although the original offence was committed before the present Execu- 
tive came into power. If the Administration knowingly omitted any proper 
means to avert, or voluntarily adopted any measure calculated to precipitate, so 
dire a calamity, if it refuses to accept the terms which are believed to be now 
-offered by prostrate and suppliant Mexico, it is responsible, before God and 
man, for all the consequences of its acts or its neglects. I shall not venture to 
affirm that, after the mortal wound which we had inflicted upon the honor and 
the interests of Mexico, by our rapacious absorption of a territory once indispu- 
tably hers, and to which she still laid claim, it was possible to avoid a war; 
but as no effort was ever made in good faith to propitiate that republic — a point 
most conclusively established by the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Dixon) — 
we are not entitled to presume that she would have turned a deaf ear to hon- 
orable proposals of peace; and inasmuch as Mexico had committed no hostile 
act, the casus belli cannot be considered as having occurred until the President 
forcibly occupied a territory not only claimed, but quietly possessed by her — 



a territory to which, as the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Thompson) has, in 
in his admirable speech, indisputably proved, Texas had not the shadow of 
title— a territory which the Senate of the United States had virtually adjudged 
to be still part and parcel of the Mexican domain. The war, therefore, was 
not only provoked, but commenced by us; and though I will not say that the 
Administration wantonly plunged into it, with a full apprehension of its ardu- 
ous character, its countless cost of treasure and of blood, yet I have no hesita- 
tion in professing my deliberate conviction that the Executive ordered the army 
to advance upon the Rio Grande under, not the belief only, but the hope, that 
this insult would goad Mexico to some hostile demonstration, which might fur- 
nish a plausible reason for a great increase of our military establishment, and, 
consequently, of Executive patronage, and, at the same time, enable the Ad- 
ministration, at the cheap cost of "a small war," to extort from humbled Mex- 
ico the cession of her fairest provinces, and thus place Mr. Polk by the side of 
his predecessor, on that bad eminence which John Tyler now occupies, solitary 
and alone, as the great enlarger of the "area of freedom." There was, more- 
over, a special motive for taking steps to secure the acquisition of a part, at 
least, of California. The surrender of our claims to northern Oregon had been 
predetermined. It was foreseen that this sacrifice of Western interests, this 
mortification of Western pride, would excite a feeling of indignation which 
must be appeased, and nothing seemed more likely to accomplish this end than 
a war with Mexico, which would furnish congenial occupation to the restless 
and adventurous spirits of the Mississippi valley, divert public attention from 
the unpopular policy of the Administration in respect to Oregon, and atone for 
the loss of the northern portion of that territory by new acquisitions on its 
southern border. 

Entertaining these views upon the origin and purposes of the war, I can 
consider it in no other light than as a national crime; but, independently of this, 
it is an offence against the moral spirit of our time, a retrograde step in the 
movement of humanity, a violent wresting of our national energies and na- 
tional resources to unnatural, inappropriate, and mischievous uses. The crea- 
tive arts of peace, the arts of production, multiplication, and conversion, are 
now universally recognised as the objects on which the physical powers of" 
man should be mainly exerted; they are arts eminently suited to the character 
and wants of our people, and the genius of our institutions, and it is a com- 
plete inversion of the principles of true statesmanship in the nineteenth cen- 
tury, as well as a violation of the rules of Christianity, to call upon our coun- 
trymen to turn the ploughshare into the sword. We are suited to grow by de- 
velopment and assimilation, rather than by sudden accretion; by gradual 
extension, than by rapid acquisition; by honorable and well-earned gain, 
than by rapacious appropriation. The very publicity inseparable from all 
the operations of our Government is fatal to the successive conduct of ag- 
gressive war, which, like most other crimes, must be planned, if not perpe- 
trated, in darkness. But it is not, perhaps, surprising that the party which 
aims to break down the industrial establishments of the country, and smother 
those peaceful arts which have hitherto so largely contributed to its moral and 
physical prosperity, should seek to withdraw attention from the pernicious ten- 
dencies of its general policy, to gild political demoralization and financial 
quackery with the splendor of foreign conquest, and to furnish new, though 
guilty, occupation to hands which are destined no longer to find employment 
in the quiet pursuits of civil life. 

A great effort is made to hide from us the enormity of this war, and to re- 
concile our consciences to its turpitude, by exaggerated pictures of the wrongs 
we have sustained at the hands of Mexico; of the glory which the prowess of 
our troops will reflect on our national character; of the advantages which we 



5 

-are to reap from a few successful campaigns. The South is told that, by the 
acquisition of new territory, we shall obtain room for that extension of slavery, 
which is alleged to be essential to the permanence of the system, the continued 
political ascendancy of the South, and the future security of the slaveholder, 
and shall thereby disappoint the delusive hope with which Mr. Walker's fa- 
mous letter cozened the Democracy of the North into the support of annexa- 
tion, as a measure favorable to the ultimate extinction of slavery; the North is 
encouraged to hope that, by force of the Wilmot proviso, engrafted on some 
war bill, or treaty of peace, the further spread of slavery will be prevented, 
and thus the vaunted extension of the area of freedom will at length come to 
be no longer an impudent mockery; and they who have clothed two nations in 
scarlet and in sackcloth, and kindled the fires of hell in ten times ten thousand 
hearts, would blind us to all this misery, all this guilt, with the dazzling lustre 
of the "brightest jewel of the diadem of commerce," the trade of the east, which 
the balmy gales of the Pacific are to waft to our future commercial marts in 
the secure havens of California, in galleons more richly freighted than the half- 
.forgotten prizes of Drake and Anson. 

I am not an apologist for Mexico; still less an admirer of her polity or her 
institutions. No man can be better persuaded that she has done us great 
wrongs — wrongs for which we might lawfully have exacted atonement, had 
they not been provoked by our injurious treatment of her; no man can hope 
less from the future prospects, or the future disposition of a country cursed 
with the two worst possible forms of misrule — the tyranny of the soldier and 
the tyranny of the priest. The people of Mexico are, technically, the enemies 
of my country. I wish them no triumphs over our diplomacy, no trophies over 
our arms; but I have no sympathy with that mistaken spirit of revenge, which 
glories in visiting the errors of rulers on their ignorant and unoffending subjects; 
none with that infernal passion which gloats upon the corses of the slaughtered 
Indians — the forced recruits, that constitute so large a proportion of the Mex- 
ican armies; none with that hell-born ambition, with 

" Eye that scorcheth all it glares upon ;" 
which scorns the victories of peace, and vouchsafes the chaplet to none but 
the minister of misery and death. I have no desire that a single Mexican wife 
should be made a widow, a single Mexican child an orphan; and I would rather 
that my country should sit down in honest shame, than purchase, at the price 
■of rapine and tears and blood, the "unjust glory" of waving her flag over all 
the wide continent that stretches between the stormy Atlantic and th e shores 
of the Tranquil Sea. 

" One murder makes a villain, thousands a hero." 
But the cold-blooded politician, who, safe in his cabinet, provokes hostilities 
for the sake of the patronage that war may give him — the ambitious statesman, 
who wages a war of conquest for the extension of his country's territory, or 
the glory of his own Administration — the hot-headed ruler, who bathes a con- 
tinent in blood to avenge a fancied insult, or a breach of diplomatic etiquette — 
these are wholesale manslayers, whom no carnage can elevate to heroism. 
Napoleon, that man of iron and of blood, repented, trembled, wept, when he 
remembered that he had needlessly anticipated the attack of an outpost, and 
thus shortened by a day the lives of a few soldiers, to gratify the curiosity of a 
woman with the spectacle of a battle. But what compunctions have visited our 
rulers, for the blood of those who fell in the ranks in the valley of the Rio Grande, 
at the storming of Monterey, at Buena Vista, at Cerro Gordo, and in those san- 
guinary conflicts under the walls of Mexico; for the unolfending and unresisting 
women and children, who were slaughtered in the bombardment of Vera Cruz, 
or who have fallen victims to the infuriated passions of an undisciplined, ma- 



rauding, soldiery; for the thousands whom the pestilence of the camp has 
silently swept into the grave; for the sorrow and desolation of bereavement,, 
whose tokens are so conspicuous even in the highways of this metropolis? 

But. while discussing the moral considerations connected with this question, 
it is fit that we should inquire into the character of the original causa causarum 
of the war, and all its attendant crimes and miseries, the measure of which 
they are, as I have already said, legitimate, if not necessary consequences, and 
of the means by which that great wrong was effected. 

I shall not take upon myself to maintain that the bare act of annexation, con- 
sidered apart from its motives and its means, was clearly a just and sufficient 
ground for a declaration of war against us by Mexico. The determination of 
this question would involve an inquiry into the relations between that republic 
and her revolted province, which is not practicable, until the secret history of 
the Texan revolution shall be better understood than it is likely to be by this 
generation. Texas may be said to have established an actual independence, 
and it is possible, though never yet proved, that her revolt was justified by the 
misgovernment of Mexico, or the inability of that unhappy State to afford a 
protective government at all. But whatever may have been the right of the 
question between the metropolis and her colon} 7 , it is plain that our conduct 
must be judged by the motives which guided us, and the instrumentalities to 
which we resorted. 

The avowed motives of the annexation of Texas were to prevent the aboli- 
tion of slavery in that country, and to secure additional territory for the expan- 
sion and growth of the system. It was argued that the accomplishment of these' 
objects was indispensable to the permanence and stability of the institution of 
slavery; that they were necessaiy for the maintenance of a local right, recog- 
nised and guarantied by the Constitution, and that therefore the General Gov- 
ernment was in good faith bound to aid in effecting them. There were also 
some timid suggestions concerning the value of Texas as a future market for 
northern produce and manufactures; some puerile apprehensions of the estab- 
lishment of British domination in that republic; some idle babble about the im- 
portance of that territory to the military defence of the Union; some philan- 
thropic humbug in regard to the influence of annexation in hastening the final 
extinction of slavery; but I pass these over, because, although they might 
impose on those weak brethren, who were simple enough to be deluded by the 
Kane letter into the belief that Mr. Polk was friendly to the protective policy 
and the tariff of 1842, yet it is quite notorious that none of them influenced', 
one vote in the American Congress. The twenty-eighth Congress was called' 
upon to decide the naked, undisguised problem, whether annexation should be 
consummated as "a Southern question, a question of slavery," whether the 
General Government, whose authority to restrict slavery is denied, should be 
invoked to put forth its power to maintain and defend it. 

Up to this time it had been strenuously insisted by the advocates of South- 
ern rights that the Federal Government had absolutely no jurisdiction of any 
matter pertaining to the institution of slavery, except the right of recaption of 
fugitive slaves in the free States, in opposition to the views of the abolitionists, 
who contended that the influence of the Government ought to be exerted to 
brin°- about the ultimate abrogation of the system. But here, in their over- 
heated zeal, the partizans of annexation conceded the principle to their oppo- 
nents; and the abolitionists have now the example and the authority of their 
ablest antagonists for appealing to the General Government for legislative ac- 
tion upon a matter hitherto alleged to lie exclusively within the jurisdiction of 
the several States. But my colleague, (Mr. Collamer,) has lately so fully and 
clearly elucidated this point, that it would be quite idle for me to enlarge upon; 
the subject. 



I have neither time nor desire to enter, at present, into any discussion of the 
moral character of slavery itself, as a christian or an unchristian institution. I 
have already, on other occasions, expressed myself explicitly enough on that 
topic, and my opinions are still unchanged, in spite of the theological argument, 
the proof from Holy Writ, which I have heard advanced on this floor, and with 
which, as certain indications lead me to conclude, we are again to be favored. 

But whatever may be the character of that system, whatever its influence 
for good or evil, it is of great moment to the cause of historical truth that it 
should never be forgotten — that the true motive which dictated the action of 
all, I repeat it, of all official persons, who aided in the annexation of Texas, 
was to extend, strengthen, and perpetuate the tottering institution of domestic 
slavery. 

But wrong as I hold the motive to have been, I fear that, if the whole truth 
were revealed, we should find more of crime in the means and appliances 
through which that act was accomplished, than in the end itself. He who 
would write the blackest page in American history must ferret out the secret 
and long continued intrigues, by which the Texan Revolution was fomented; 
uncover the hollow duplicity with which our neutral relations with Mexico were 
violated; disclose the Machiavellian diplomacy by which opposite and inconsis- 
tent arguments were made to influence different sections of this country, and 
the arts whereby annexation was made the policy of the Democratic party, in 
spite of the deliberate and solemnly expressed convictions of the entire North; 
depict how the hopes of Texan stock-jobbers fell and rose as this or that North- 
ern Democratic member exhibited tokens of rebellion, or meekly gave in his 
adhesion to the slavish policy of his party; expose the means by which certain 
sudden and notorious changes of opinion in these legislative halls were produced; 
explain how that contemptible faction, that so long swung here like a pendu- 
lum, between the law of conscience and the dictate of party, alternately betray- 
ing each, was at length fixed; and, in fine, tell what votes were extorted by cra- 
ven fear, and what purchased hy damnable corruption. 

I think myself bound in candor to admit that, however selfish may have been 
the policy of the South in the matter of annexation, the conduct of the most un- 
scrupulous Southern advocates of that untoward measure is infinitely more ex- 
cusable than that of their Northern allies, who, by the stand they have taken 
on the Wilmot Proviso, have pronounced upon themselves judgment of irrevo- 
cable condemnation. The whole Southern people entertained a fixed opinion, 
mistaken I think, but unquestionably sincere, that the best interests of the South 
imperiously demanded annexation; and those brave, good men from the slave- 
holding States, who stood by their whole country in that dark hour, did verily 
believe that, in obeying the voice of conscience, they were making a heroic 
sacrifice of a local interest to the stronger claims of the general good. The 
Northern supporters of annexation have placed upon record a solemn avowal, 
which time will not expunge, that they had falsely betrayed the rights and in- 
terests of those who sent them hither. The Wilmot Proviso, as it is called af- 
ter its putative father, or the Brinkerhoff Proviso, as perhaps it should be styled, 
(for I leave those gentlemen to settle the question of paternity between them- 
selves,) coming as it did from a knot of politicians, whose whole political action 
furnishes most conclusive proof of their insincerity, is the boldest experiment 
ever tried upon the credulity of the American people; and now that it has fail- 
ed to delude those upon whom it was intended to impose, that it has effected 
neither of the two objects it was designed to accomplish, I have no hesitation 
in predicting, that many of those who were most zealous for its adoption will 
be the first to listen to temptation from high places, and to abandon the princi- 
ple it embodies. Sir, I embrace not all in this sweeping condemnation. Some 
thore were who were untainted with the original sin of annexation, some wbos§ 



moral courage had not been stern enough to resist the menaces of party and 
the blandishments of power, and who, now repentant, took, too late, this only 
method of testifying their unavailing regret for that most deplorable and fatal 
error. But for the mass of those who both promoted annexation and sustained 
the Wilmot Proviso, I have no such charity. With these, two considerations 
were operative. Some hoped to propitiate a local feeling at home; with others, 
the whole affair was but an ill-concealed stratagem to dispose of an obnoxious 
Western candidate for the Presidency, by compelling him to commit himself 
on this ticklish question by his vote in the Senate, while his great rival was ly- 
ing perdu at the North, in a position which relieved him from the necessity of 
taking either horn of the dilemma. That Western gentleman has taken ground 
against the Proviso; but in spite of this, if he should chance to be selected as 
the Democratic candidate for the Executive chair, I will confess that I know 
little of the Democracy, if his noisiest adherents are not found among the very 
men who dug that pit to entrap him. The Proviso, it will be remembered, was 
adopted in the House of Representatives, as an amendment to the "three mil- 
lion bill," on the 15th of February, 1847, by a majority of nine. On the 3d 
of March, 1847, the Administration defeated the amendment by a majority of 
five. Sir, they could just as easily have made that majority^/j/ty. Some soli- 
tary Democratic Abdiel, indeed, might have been found faithful enough, "with 
flame of zeal severe," to maintain 

"Against revolted multitudes the cause 
Of Truth." 

But I am speaking what every member of the 2Sth Congress knows, when I 
say that the Northern -(Democrats generally were prepared to abandon the Pro- 
viso, at once and altogether, as soon as it was ascertained that it would be de- 
feated in the Senate. But elections were approaching in New Hampshire and 
Connecticut, there were vacancies in the Congressional delegation from Maine 
to be filled, and it was thought not safe to shock the people of those States by 
too sudden a dereliction from a principle which had just been proclaimed with 
such a fanfaronnade of Democratic tin trumpets. The Administration preferred 
the risk of the moral effect in strengthening the abolition cause to the probable 
loss of those three States, and therefore issued a dispensation to the faithful of 
the North, graciously permitting them, for this once, to adhere to the abhorred 
Proviso. 

I shall not characterize this relaxation of party discipline as a crime; but, 
considering the end designed to be effected, it was what the great French intriguer 
said was worse — it was a blunder. The people of the North, even the Demo- 
cracy, have taken their leaders at their word, pledged themselves irrevocably 
to the great characteristic feature of the ordinance of 1787, and though deserted 
by their faithless guides, will firmly maintain the new position they have 
assumed. 

Mr. Chairman, I do not know the present state of public opinion at the 
South on this matter of Texan annexation; but, now that Texas has proved to 
be not quite the El Dorado it was fabled, that it has been the means of involv- 
ing us in an unjust predatory war, exciting a lust for territorial aggrandizement 
which threatens to become the fatal spring of every crime and every curse that 
have disgraced the most rapacious States of the old world, of kindling anew 
the flames of civil discord, and alienating from each other the members of this 
fair confederacy, I am much mistaken if, after all this, some of the clear-headed 
and patriotic sons of the South do not begin to entertain doubts of the wisdom, 
the expediency, the justice of that measure, if there are not even some who 
would be content to spare the baleful effulgence of that "lone star," if we 
could thereby secure quiet within our own borders, and an honorable peace 
with the republic of Mexico. 



The only remaining lawful motive for the further prosecution of this war is 
to obtain a just and honorable peace; for revenge, if so base a passion could 
be an adequate inducement for a great nation to engage in war with a puny 
and imbecile people, has long since been satisfied. But what terms of peace 
would be honorable and just? No peace can be honorable to us, which is not 
at the same time honorable to Mexico. It can never be honorable to the 
stronger to extort by force that which it is dishonorable to the weaker to yield. 
What, then, are the obligations of Mexico to us? Does she owe us any thing 
for exciting an insurrection in her most important colony, and giving "aid and 
comfort" to her revolted subjects? Any thing for appropriating to ourselves a 
territory once indisputably hers, and to which she had never sold or surren- 
dered her claim ? Any thing for invading and ravaging with fire and sword, 
upon a baseless pretence of title, a disputed region, of which she was, and 
from the first hour of her national existence had been, in quiet and undisturbed 
possession? Any thing for the slaughter of thousands of her people, the storm- 
ing of Monterey, the inglorious rout of Buena Vista, the reduction of her 
strongest fortress, the military occupation of her fairest provinces, the conquest 
of her proud capital, and the destruction of the venerable memorials of her an- 
cient civilization, the humiliation, disgrace, and dissolution of her government? 
What claim have we but the recognition and payment of her acknowledged 
liabilities to private American citizens; and who doubts that she is now ready 
again to recognise them, and to pay them whenever she has the means? But, 
on the other hand, has it not been over and over again admitted by this Gov- 
ernment that Mexico ought to receive an indemnity for the loss of Texas? 
Have not distinct intimations been given that the United States would make 
her a reasonable pecuniary allowance in any arrangement by which she should 
cede to us her rights to her revolted province? Who shall estimate the 
amount of this compensation? Are we to be judges in our own cause, and to 
determine that, upon the whole, the balance is upon our side?- Gentlemen 
who repudiate acquisition of territory by conquest, and who have heretofore 
admitted that we owed Mexico a compensation for the relinquishment of her 
rights to Texas, still insist that we must coerce the cession of California and 
other provinces by way of indemnity for the claims of our citizens, and this 
upon the avowed ground that a balance may be due us which Mexico can pay 
in no other way. The claims of our citizens are supposed to amount to from 
three to seven millions. If Mexico was entitled to an indemnity for the loss 
of Texas, would any man estimate the value of her claim at less than seven 
millions? And had she no such claim, can it be pretended that California, and 
all the vast territory between that province and Texas, if worth any thing, are 
worth no more than this? There is, then, no just, no honorable ground for 
prosecuting this war as a means of coercing an indemnity to our citizens, or 
of the acquisition of territory; and any compulsory treaty, by which Mexico 
shall yield us that which she does not owe, will be humiliating to her and 
<loubly shameful to us. 

But such a peace as the Administration hopes now to conquer, and now to 
fruy, will be attended with as little of profit as of honor. What has this nation 
to gain by further extension of territory? The prosperity of a people consists 
in the aggregate individual prosperity of its citizens, and is not measured by 
the number of its armies or its fleets, the extent of its territorial jurisdiction, 
or the splendor of its government. We are apt to forget that a splendid gov- 
ernment is not one of the objects of our institutions, and to confound the power 
of rulers with the prosperity of their subjects; but who doubts that the citizens 
of the little republic of San Marino, and of the duchy of Tuscany, are as happy 
and as prosperous as if they were annexed to the kingdom of Sardinia, or even 
enjoyed the paternal discipline of the gentle Metternich? Who has forgotten. 



10 

taal Eu?ope h r ,gh ° ne ° f the feeMeSt P ° WerS ' " yet the freest state of con - 

no^aftendeTwiff .**? P ° Wer °r * ? overnment b 7 territorial aggrandizement is 
not attended with a corresponding increase of the power of the people to resist 

l en c C o me T' 8 UP °\ th ! lll ^ tieS ° f thG Giti2en - With enlarg^S of te - 
IhihTmo TAT* ° f S , tai ; d K ng a T lieS ' ° f Mvies ' aild > especially, of that 
tlese instZlt f r ° US l ° Lbei ' ty than either ' of Executive patronage. All 
and di^sT W r Ver »™ coaCe ?t Vated > the means of resistance scattered 
the dtSio; of ' 1 Smal l Te * uh } **' is the safe S uard of their liberties- 
becomts in "l P0Wer ° Ugh , ' mUltltudG of J urisd ^tions and departments- 
S«^«nf ^ 1 ?? Qn T ealths " en ° ine for iheir overthrow, whenever 
jurTsdic'ion^ * P at ™™ge enables the Executive to control those 

of ^l 8 ,^ 68 ha 7 " either , fleets ■» armies, and though the ordinary militia 
hL\ ? g ! T ° f them ^- ght Set at defiance the whole military force which it 
™Si? ■ V Ur P 0llCy u t0 maintai *> y et ^ does not follow that the in- 
ZZ „n /T* navie t, whlch our contemplated expansion will oblige us to 

nntiL a may n0t enaWe ^ ambiti0US President to establish a military des- 
potism, and as in ancient Rome, the soldiery raised to protect the frontier 
may supersede your electoral colleges, and impose upon you a Dictator, who- 
shall supersede your Constitution and your laws. Even now tokens of eviL 
augury may be discerned. The legions of Pennsylvania have cast their suf- 
frages in Mexico. The ballot-box has become a part of the furniture of the 
camp, and the commander, whom military law invests with the power of life 
and death, issues his orders for the "free" election of the civil magistracy of 
a Mate, to whose jurisdiction neither he nor his troops are longer amenable. 
«„«■♦! . 01 ^ mde P endent count iy is sufficiently wide, and its climate 

sumciently genial, to supply its population with the cardinal necessaries of hu- 
man life, and reasonable means of exchange with foreign lands-when its phy- 
sical power is adequate to its defence against invasion and aggression, and 
when its rights to an equal position among civilized communities are recognised, 
it possesses all the necessary elements of true prosperity, and nothing is gained 
by further increase of power or extension of territory. This point we reached 
long since. Indeed, our original limits fulfilled all the necessary conditions of 
national prosperity and I much doubt whether we should not at this moment 
have occupied a higher place among the nations of the earth than we now en- 
J0J ' w u j en C ° atent with the inheritance our wiser fathers devised to 
us. We had a territory, such, in position and configuration, that it was wholly 
invulnerable from without, and at the same time so situated as to give us the 
most enviable facilities for universal commerce, as well as for maritime power; 
we enjoyed a boundless variety of soil, climate, and natural productions; an 
extent oi surface adequate to the sustenance of a larger population than any 
kmgdom of Europe, and yielding the most abundanf materials for industrial 
elaboration, the most plentiful means of commercial exchange. What more 
than this has earth to offor to social man? I shall not dispute the wisdom of 
the acquisition of Florida and eastern Louisiana. The latter seemed necessary, 
as a means of providing an outlet for the products of the teeming West/espe- 
cially m the day when canals and railroads had not yet furnished a better 
means of transport to the ocean than that famous river, which is "frozen for 
three months in the year, and dry the remaining nine;" or even than that 
inland sea, whose snags and sawyers are more formidable to navigators 
than the Libyan Syrtes, or the rock and whirlpool of old ScyUa and Charybdis; 
but I am not able to see wherein the lot of any American has been, or is likeh- 
to be, improved by further expansion. I cannot conceive that the value of 
plantations, in the old Southern States will be increased, by throwing into mar- 



II 

ket the cotton and sugar lands of Texas; that the price of Genessee flour will 
be raised by competition with the vast grain-growing region between the Mis- 
sissippi and the Rocky mountain desert; or that the commerce of New York, 
and Philadelphia, and Baltimore, and Charleston, will profit by the transfer of 
the China trade to the Bay of San Francisco, or the mouth of the Columbia. 
There is at least no present necessity of extension for the accommodation of 
our growing population, or for any purpose of national trade or national de- 
fence; and it would, therefore, be worse than idle to wage a useless and a 
guilty war, to conquer for posterity a territory which it will be quite able to 
secure for itself by honest means, whenever it may require it. 

I am sceptical in regard to the exact truth of the glowing descriptions we 
have heard and read of the physical advantages of Oregon and California. But 
if they, indeed, are what they are represented to be, they well may, and no 
doubt will, one day form a separate confederacy. They are rapidly filling up 
with American emigrants, and they will soon be strong enough to maintain 
themselves as an independent people. They will sympathize with our institu- 
tions, and adopt our form of government, but they can never have a common 
interest with us, and the mutual good of all parties will demand that all political 
bonds between them and us should be severed. Why, then, persevere in this 
unprofitable struggle, to acquire what cannot long be ours to enjoy? 

But what evidence is there that the possession of New Mexico, or California, 
however permanent, can be attended with any solid advantages to the people 
of this country? They are separated from us by sterile and arid deserts, or 
chains of lofty and almost impassable mountains. They yield no natural pro- 
ducts of commercial value which our own soil does not abundantly supply. 
They are described by the best informed explorers as being, in the main, unsuited 
to agriculture, unable to sustain a dense population, adapted only to the lowest 
form of semi-civilized life — the pastoral state. And, above all, they are in- 
habited by a mixed population, of habits, opinions, and characters incapable of 
sympathy or assimilation with our own; a race, whom the experience of an 
entire generation has proved to be unfitted for self-government, and unprepared 
to appreciate, sustain, or enjoy, free institutions. 

But how is the war to be carried on? Every financial scheme hitherto pro- 
posed is based on the assumption, that the North will be generous enough, or 
stupid enough, to bear the sole pecuniary burden of a war, commenced and 
prosecuted with a single eye to the interests of, I will not say the people, but 
of certain political aspirants of the South. The annexation of Texas, a strictly 
Southern measure, and the initiatory step towards this war, by giving the anti- 
tariff party a majority in the Senate, enabled those aspirants to deprive the in- 
dustry of the North of the protection to which it was justly entitled, and which 
it had enjoyed, from the organization of the Government to that evil hour when 
the tariff of 1846 was adopted; and these same aspirants, and their followers, 
now propose to tax our pockets, to pay for all the consent" -mces of that disas- 
trous act. The Secretary of the Treasury recommends a duty on tea and cof- 
fee; other prominent Democrats have advised the imposition of duties on the 
free list, embracing many articles chiefly consumed at the North; and others, 
again, stern republican haters, no doubt, of accumulated wealth, and luxury, 
and superfluity, disinterestedly propose a tax on bank stock, and all articles of 
gold and silver. Disguise it as you will, it is plain that all these schemes are 
both calculated and designed to shift the whole pecuniary burden of the war 
upon Northern shoulders. How much tea and coffee are consumed by the 
three or four millions of Southern slaves? What is the value of the jewelry 
that decks their persons, and the forks, and spoons, and goblets of plate 
that adorn their tables? How many of them consult gold and silver watches, 
to know their hours of labor, refreshment, and repose? The last Democratic 



House of Representatives resolved, on the motion of a Southern gentleman, 
-that the people of he United States are too patriotic to refuse any necessary^ 
tax in time of war " How happens it that no Southern Democratic financier 
has ever been "patriotic" enough to move a- tax for the support of this war, 
embracing a certain description of property possessed onlv by the South— 
''persons," namely, "held in slavery, or involuntary servitude?" And when that 
persecuted philanthropist, who has "achieved greatness" by coupling his name 
With the far-famed proviso, moved a tax, apportioned according to the Consti- 
tution on the same basis as congressional representation, with what transports 
of jubilant "patriotism" did the "sweet South" hail the suggestion I Sir the 
Government organ very plainly intimated to him, that Ms "patriotism" was of 
the sort so energetically anathematized by Dr. Johnson. 

Mr. Chairman, I warn gentlemen that none of these shallow devices to tax 
one portion of this Confederacy for the benefit of another will succeed; and 
those who desire to protract the Avar must, in the end, be content to bear their 
share, at least, of its burdens. It has been affirmed that no resort to direct tax- 
ation will be necessary. I am not of that opinion. We shall not know the 
cost of the war so long as this Administration has it in its power to conceal it 
from the people; but we know enough of it to be certain that it cannot be car- 
ried on without an expenditure vastly greater than any previous conflict has 
occasioned. Mexico has thrice the population of this Confederacy at the out- 
break of the American Revolution— a population, though inferior to that of the 
colonies in the qualities of the soldier, yet not divided in opinion respectino- the 
justice of their cause nor half paralyzed by superstitious doubts upon the law- 
fulness of rebellion, but united as one man in defending their soil ao-ainst the 
incursions of a foe alien in blood, and strangers in language and religion If 
Great Britain, after eight years of warfare, the expenditure of hundreds of mil- 
lions of money, and the loss of many thousands of lives, was willing to with- 
draw from the struggle with her former colonies, at the sacrifice of every point 
.for which she contended, at what cost of money, with what loss of life, and 
after how long a war, may we hope to extort from Mexico a peace which shall 
yield to us all that we choose to ask, and all she has to give? 

I have' given my reasons for thinking that no increase of our present territory 
is desirable, and I believe it is now possible, by a union of the good men of 
all parties, to arrest the evils which must ensue from any further successful at- 
tempts at sectional aggrandizement. Let us unite in a solemn legislative de- 
claration that this war shall not be prosecuted with a view to the dismember- 
ment of Mexico. Let us refuse all supplies to armies equipped for conquest 
and proclaim to our sister Republic that we are now ready to accept precisely 
the terms we ought to have offered before we commenced this unhappy war 
I think myself entirely safe in saying, that if the honest convictions of a ma- 
jority of both Houses do not compel them to sanction, by their votes, proposi- 
tions like these, the world will be justified in believing that, with American 
legislators, the voice of patriotism is less heeded than the dictates of party 

There is another consideration, which ought to have weight with honest men 
of all parties, with the people of every section of the American Union- it is 
the certainty that any extension of our territory in a south westwardly direction 
involves the renewed agitation, and in a far more fearful shape, of the Missouri 
controversy. Whenever a treaty shall be presented to the Senate, embracing 
the cession of Mexican territory, the question will be directly presented 
Southern gentlemen affirm that no treaty, attended, directly or indirectly, with 
a prohibition of slavery south of 36° 30', can be ratified. We of the North de- 
mand that none shall be, and are firmly persuaded that none can be, ratified 
without. Why, then, conquer or buy provinces which will be but an apple of 
discord, to be quarrelled over, but not enjoyed? 



13 

I admired the firmness which some Southern gentlemen, of both parties, dis- 
played during the pendency of the Oregon question, in spite of popular clamor 
and the denunciations of a venal press. They saved this country from a war, 
which the folly of the Administration seemed to have rendered inevitable, and 
compelled the settlement of a difficult and long-pending controversy upon terms 
of equitable adjustment, which the good sense of the nation has fully approved. 
It remains for them to prove, Avhat I have hitherto believed, and still trust, 
that their conduct on that occasion was dictated by no jealousy of Northern 
aggrandisement, to exercise now the magnanimity they then professed, and to 
refute the charge that they have constrained the Administration to truckle to 
omnipotent Britain, and aided it to trample on impotent Mexico. 

There is, so far as I know, no particular anxiety at the North to extend our 
boundaries in a northwardly direction, but such a feeling will inevitably be ex- 
cited by further acquisitions in the opposite quarter, and it is well to under- 
stand that a confederacy of States, a Government independent of Great Britain, 
and even annexation to the United States, have all come to be debateable ques- 
tions in Canada itself. I do not refer to any contemplated insurrection or vio- 
lent revolution; but it is certain that an entire though peaceful change in the 
administration of those colonies, by which their government shall become, in a 
great measure, assimilated to our own, and at no distant day allied with, if not 
merged in it, is both desired and expected by a large proportion of those British- 
subjects in the provinces, who, a very few years since, detested nothing more 
thoroughly than American institutions. 

The vote on the supply bill of May, 1S46, by which the existence of the 
war with Mexico was recognised, has been much insisted on as a committal of 
those who voted for the bill to the support of all measures looking to the prose- 
cution of the war. I do not esteem this argument a very ingenuous one, on 
the part of those who advance it. It is notorious that the bill, as originally re- 
ported, contained no declaration of war, or recognition of the war as existing; 
that the false and offensive preamble embracing that declaration was offered as 
an amendment, after the time for debate had been limited to two hours, during 
which no Whig was allowed to obtain the floor; that the amendment was op- 
posed by almost every Whig member of the House; that several amendments, 
simply providing the necessary supplies, were rejected, and that, after the 
adoption of the preamble, the bill was immediately passed under the previous 
question. At that time nothing was known of Taylor's victories. The army 
was thought, by military men in Washington, to be in an eminently critical po- 
sition; and it was believed, that though it might sustain itself for a few weeks, 
yet, unless relieved, it must inevitably soon be cut off by the Mexican forces. 
The consequences of a defeat would have been, in a high degree, disastrous. 
We should have lost our most reliable troops. A victory by the Mexicans 
would have stimulated them to desperate efforts to follow up the advantages 
they had gained. Foreign sympathies would have been enlisted in their favor, 
and foreign adventurers, by sea and land, would have flocked to their standard. 
These evils, it was hoped, might be averted, by sending immediate succor to 
our gallant troops, whom the temerity of the Administration had exposed to 
imminent hazard, and those opposed to the war were apparently left to choose 
between the sacrifice of three thousand brave men and the support of a bill in- 
tended to save them, though prefaced by a preamble as false as the provoca- 
tion of the war was unjustifiable. The fact that war existed was, indeed, un- 
questionable, and the defence of our country and its troops was clearly a duty. 
Should we be deterred from the performance of this duty because a majority of 
this House chose to assert, in spite of our protestations to the contrary, that the 
war had been begun by the "act of Mexico?" We thought not. It was plain 
that a snare was laid for us. The authors of the war desired to compel us to 



14 



Perhaps X a^tft w ' "^ *"* T( 0rCed U P° fl US > We «***«* the b 11 

rflZfi'Zl 1 ^ 6XiStS ' Md Wh ™ «» iH^uw"e 
01 msmemberment, plunder, and conquest is proclaimed, with a shamele^ 

£ fSjlZZi* "^ ^ ° Pen "^ ° f la " > h — -Livine of whfch 
dispensa ton t n 7" *°a T™^ dnCe the P rom ^gation of the'cXan 
in £ce wi'f h S§ l W ° rdS + ° CX ? reSS ^ abhorrence of the heaven-daring 

insolence with which maxims, tnat thieves and robbers would blush to own 

Besides these general reasons against furnishing supplies for the prosecution 

organized are very far from full in rank and file. These th & e PreskJent has 

co°mp[i lie"" Xhfntfr^' ?* % ^ ^ F*^^**^5 
compiisiied within the term of another twelvemonth. Why, then organize 

SrL W tt exis f^ ones are, and are destined^ rem^me ' 
•office ed fo n ff l" P **\ F?" re - iments are to b « raised, or rather 
Sve to enX .t to °!i T but t0 mCreaSe the Peonage of the Execu- 

V rodioS Slut on of ^r a , rd ^W Ptisans, or purchase new ones, by a 

Eed WHl Z v K and em ° 1 r ents - How wil1 ^ese regiments be 
omcered.'' Will the higher commands be tendered to gentlemen of militarv 
education and experience? Will faithful service in Florida, or hi his ^Mexican 

S'offiZ^beir Vr Tf°f He , that WOUld ^owfro^fatS 
thtu 77 taken needs but consult the records of the War Office for 

h flurZItZV^ n° k ^ thG h ° rdeS ° f COTm0rants that flo <* hither from 
me lour quarters of the Union, at every rumored augmentation of the armv and 
are even now trooping at the heels of men in authority, and Tali foi paV and 

m^en I who , winS e r T? *" aPPl, - CantS b ™, honS ^ 
Sp mf f *i , Credlt t0 ai ^ service ' an J Profession. But what are 

vocaTon for faboV^TT ^^ Idle *"><* loafers, who, feXg n" 
aSSt hPtSr ' h avin S experimentally proved their incapacity to do 

aught better, conceive themselves to be gifted with "military inius "and 

^ g tnZ:t\~ 1° de f r0y and % waste what creative Lfur'nd hu- 
man industry have produced; political jack-puddings, whose success in partv 

S^f **» witb ™? notion's of their' own abilities in ffifig 
Thuni 7 ' vprZ? ' Unshaven . coxcombs . microscopic martialists, truculent Tom 
1 numb , veidant overgrown juvenals, burly thrasonic Anakim, with an air that 
reminds one of the giant's chant in the fable— ' 

Fee, faw, fum ! 

I smell the blood of a Mexican ! 

Dead or alive, I will have some ! 



15 

Truly, Mr. Chairman, I can say, with the poor young prince — 

My eyes are out, 

Even with the fierce looks of these bloody men. 

Of such cheap stuffas this are chiefly made the self-puffed "citizen-soldier," pseu- 
doheroes of this Mexican war, whom blinded party zeal permits to usurp rank and 
honors denied to the wiser and better men, whose courage and skill, and heroic 
self-devotion, have enabled the adventurers who have supplanted them to reap 
a transient harvest of false glory, that as ill becomes the wearers as borrowed 
plumes the jackdaw. Brute courage, indeed, these doughty paladins may have; 
I see no reason why they should not. Risking themselves they risk little, and 
valuing their own lives at nothing, they estimate them at just what they are 
worth. 

I have touched upon a point to which the attention of the American public 
has been by no means as strongly drawn as its importance demands. I refer 
to the injustice with which the officers of the regular army have been treated. 
Not only have they been denied the promotion to which experience and faith- 
ful service had entitled them, but it has been the studied effort of the Adminis- 
tration, and the party that sustains it, to deprive them of the credit Which justly 
belongs to them for the brilliant successes that have crowned our military oper- 
ations in Mexico, by ascribing to the mere animal courage of the volunteers 
and new raised regiments, results which were in a far greater degree due to 
the skill and intelligence of the educated gentlemen of the regular army, by 
wdiomthe most important movements were directed or advised. I am not dis- 
posed to question the patriotism or the valor of the volunteers. The Ameri- 
can people have sufficiently exhibited these qualities on other and less equivo- 
cal fields, and I have no doubt they will again be displayed in still more heroic 
forms, whenever a higher motive and a worthier cause shall demand their 
exercise. 

But I fear the noble sentiment of patriotism has been too much alloyed by 
other impulses besides a sense of duty to our country. What was there, in 
fact, to call forth any special enthusiasm of patriotic feeling? How had our 
country's honor been tarnished, save by the acts of her own rulers? What 
American hearth had been threatened with desolation, what fields menaced 
with Mexican invasion? So far as the rescue of our gallant army from the 
critical position in which it had been placed, not, as I believe, by any error of 
judgment in the brave and wise man who led it, but by the express, though un- 
constitutional order of the Cabinet; so far as the protection of the country against 
the serious evils which, both as immediate and indirect consequences, would 
have resulted from the sacrifice of that army; so far as the conduct of the vol- 
unteers has been prompted by such considerations, it has been eminently praise- 
worthy. But beyond this I fear there is little that a Christian or a moralist 
can approve, little that a wise statesman would desire to cherish. If you sub- 
tract from the impulses of those who have so eagerly rushed to the field the 
hope of military fame, and perhaps of political advancement as its consequence, 
the passion for the romance of danger, the love of daring enterprise, and the 
expectation of wild adventure in those strange and distant climes, which the 
historians of the infernal exploits of Cortez have made classic ground, you will, 
in too many instances, have little left but that savage thirst of blood, which 
eigtheen centuries of Christian teachings have not yet been able to eradicate 
from the human breast. 

But creditable as are our recent victories to the bravery of our troops, they are 
far more important to our national safety and renown, as furnishing to the world 
evidence that the highest order of strategical talent exists among us, and that 
our system of military education is able to produce as accomplished a corps 
of officers as the best regulated European professional schools. 



16 

The disposition to withhold from the regular officers the praise and the re- 
wards to which they are justly entitled is not an accident, not a mere matter 
of personal feeling with the members of the present Cabinet, but it is one among 
the many evidences of a design, which has been long entertained by a certain 
party, to demoralize the army, break down its esprit de corps, abolish the mili- 
tary academy, and convert the military establishment into an engine of political 
corruption. The army, as formerly organized, is too conservative in its char- 
acter and influence to suit the views of the destructive school. Education, 
subordination, discipline, permanent tenure of office, are formidable obstacles to 
the "progress" of modern Democracy; and among other "reforms," which will 
signalize the triumph of radicalism, will be the suppression of the school at West 
Point, rotation in office in the military service, and the establishment of the 
principle that political subserviency is the onty route to military preferment. 
The introduction of similar innovations into the navy is somewhat more difficult, 
but it is not impracticable even there; and in case a European war should re- 
quire an increase of our marine, the oldest commodore may very probably find 
himself superseded by a New York pilot, or an amateur captain of a private 
yacht. 

I know as little of the grounds on which the Administration has thought pro- 
per to take away one-half the effective strength of the army in Mexico, by re- 
calling its accomplished commander, as I do of those on which the Executive 
chose to give double strength and vigor to the Mexican forces by restoring to 
them their ablest general; and therefore, however strong my impressions, I 
will not pronounce judgment beforehand on the propriety of that act. This 
much, however, I may safely say, that a Cabinet, which has not had the gen- 
erosity to bestow upon General Scott a single personal compliment for the great- 
est military achievement of this generation, a single word of praise on the un- 
rivalled genius displayed in the great combinations which alone rendered the 
prowess of our troops available, and which have commanded the unbounded 
admiration of the ablest living captains, exhibits a spirit of illiberality towards a 
most eminent and deserving fellow-citizen, which well accords with the injus- 
tice of its policy towards Mexico. 



113 8\ * 









r •!*•- <?■ V «LVL'« 



• A v ^ 
* ^ ** 









« o 














<V 




V <^. -.M __ 







- » -a. v <^» 






c. «p 







t!/^''* <?• 











,^% : - 















^-0^ 



4 o. 




.0 




<o. 




.0-7-. 






• <v 



>♦ 




o V 

... 




* ^ 



* <t? <$>, o^ 

• * A <*, *••»* A 

> X / .-i£s X ** .^v % / *^, *<L 



















a* .^ % % c o* . -^ X J> <^% X 



"W A* 



^•v V 








•> ^ 



\^ 



>♦ 




"o V" 




V*0^ 







, ^ fe "- %/ .*». %/ ••»'- \/ 



r o V 



i* ... 



1 • A V ^ : 



1 • A V *^ ~ J 





' . . * 






*^U A 




^ ^. V 










.HO. 



A -7*. 



